Development, for Better or Worse

Make no mistake, Vientiane is bigger than Savannakhet, despite what Savan folks might say.  Vientiane's got monuments; it's got museums; it's got traffic; it's got a mall.  That nobody goes to.  Our host here says her twenty-something daughter has never been there before.  But it's got one, it's air conditioned, and it can go in the development brochure.

I saw such a travel brochure today, one that creates a brave new world of possibilities for what Vientiane could be.  The brochure included a futuristic vision of highrises along the bend of the Mekong, with an idealistic business travel village built pseudo-traditional with all the amenities for metropolitan visitors from afar.  Basically, it was the skyline of Malaysia or Singapore superimposed onto the bend of the Mekong where Vientiane sits.  It was pretty.  In that abstract, taken from an airplane-sort of way that can't actually see any actual dwellings of where actual people actually live.  In the imagined picture, all those details get swept nicely into the alleyways of the background, slip easily into the cracks and chasms necessitated by the so-called growing pains of the city.  However, it did include a modern shopping center on the banks of the Mekong that included signs for Burger King, Heineken, and assorted other global brandnames.  (You can see their vision, already under construction here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdbXjMFf_IE) It did not include shop front houses run by anyone and everyone selling their own spring rolls, grilled meats, and soups. 

Still, Vientiane and its leaders are dreaming about what it can be, about how it can join other leading cities in the region.  In short, it's got skyscraper envy.  However, a website notes that currently the Vientiane skyline ranks 386th of 811 Asian cities, nothing to write home about, and, realistically, that's not going to change any time soon. 

But this is about Savannakhet, because Savannakhet is making a bid to become the next Vientiane, and, from internet activity on the issue and the evidences we saw in Savan, it may be well on its way.

The evidences of growth are these: new construction everywhere;  new houses everywhere; large houses in place; higher scale restaurants on outlying streets accessible primarily by car or moped; a hotel-casino--called, I kid you not, Savan Vegas Casino--that daily pipes in Thai from Mukdahan to try their luck and spend their cash. 

All this building and spending, I believe, is rooted in hope for the Savan-Seno Special Economic Zone, a vast acreage of land just off the main drag into Savannakhet that looks like its been strip-mined.  It hasn't; just opened for development.  Significant development.  And, according to the SSEZ authority, companies are signing up left and right, though the development has been slowed by the global economic crisis.  Signed up already are a leading French glass manufacturer and an Indonesian instant noodle maker, a Swiss jewelry and watch manufacturer and a Holland Boeing plant. 

This will mean, we're led to believe, good jobs for the people of Savannakhet.  Schools have already been built to try to train some workers to be ready for those jobs, and the SSEZ advertises that the glass manufacturer is already training twenty-five Lao abroad who will return to train others; no doubt international schools will follow immigrants from other countries who come in managerial positions;  roads have improved and will no doubt be better maintained.

All this should catapult Savannakhet out of its hick-younger-brother of Vientiane status and into the twenty-first century.  It should alleviate poverty and the conditions of poverty. 

We'll see how well it works in actuality.

Savannakhet can certainly benefit from exposure to the outside world.  Power and wealth, it seems, is still concentrated in family and clan ties, creating clear class boundaries that are difficult to cross except by marrying in.  Both from our experience in crossing the border and from comments from Savan people, local officials can still be capricious and arbitrary.  The internet, let me say again, is almost non-existent.

Of course, there's another side to this insularity.  Walking home one evening, the family up the road from where we were staying were all gathered around a large circular table, every chair filled, parents, grandparents, teenage children.  Family still rules to an impressive degree in Savannakhet.  Even the relaxed traffic rules can be thought of as refreshing.  So what if a moped is driving down the wrong side of a road toward you?  As long as you all watch out for each other, everyone will survive.  And as the final boon, let me say again, the internet is almost non-existent.

The poverty around Savannakhet is primaily a rural poverty.  Some shop front homes struggle mightily, you can tell; not every store and cafe can make it; there are beggars who hang around the morning market and walk into it, tugging on your arm and assuming the submissive, hands-together prayer posture to ask for a little money.  Likewise, rural life, as my mother-in-law's cousin says, is "sabbai" (easy going, laid back)--except in rice planting season where the work is labor-intensive and back breaking, and I can't believe harvest is any different.  Also, a "sabbai" life is not food-secure when it's based on serving your own chickens to guests when they come, as happened on our visit there.  People in rural Savannakhet wear secondhand shirts from America; they in some cases have no shoes; they are more susceptible to disease.

Still, what will happen when these people move in large numbers to Savannakhet for jobs?  No doubt some will catch on, no doubt some will fill positions in an enlarged service industry, but some will not.  Perhaps Savannakhet will absorb these people much as it has its current poor and there will simply be more around the fringes.

But one thing that the rural poverty of Savannakhet doesn't have is really concentrated, open-wound poverty.  I have seen one tin-shack slum on our trip here, and it was in Thailand, a collection of squatters shacks on the outskirts of Bangkok.  I did not see this kind of poverty in Savannakhet; I suspect it exists in areas of Vientiane where parts of the city are insulated enough from the countryside or the culture has broken down enough that people are unable to procure almost anything for themselves.

Whatever the case, whether the SSEZ catapults Savannakhet into the Twenty-First Century or whether it collects the poor from the countryside into ugly, festering heaps and piles, the Savannakhet we left--a sleepy, "sabbai" community, closely connected to its countryside--will soon be no more, for better or worse.

A final image: a couple live in a "sabbai" village; they have one daughter as the father makes wooden doors with handtools, and they raise chickens and pineapple; the daughter goes off to Savannakhet for a job where she gets involved with a Thai boy who gets her pregnant and leaves; the couple takes care of their grandchild from the time she's three days old.  The daughter continues to work in Savannakhet.  At Savan Vegas. 

If this is the model of development, give me the family around a circular table, give me the marginal shop front houses, give me, even, the fugitive internet.

Of course, it's not up to me.  Thank heavens.